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Here in California, especially in the summer, we love the indoor-outdoor living. That is, when our exterior spaces act as additional places to live, work and play. The outdoor spaces of our properties are so much more than your basic backyard, they are an extension of your home. Enhancing these spaces can help your family and friends to enjoy your outdoor spaces, and there are a few elements to incorporate into your living spaces that can emphasize all of your exterior assets.

Preparing Food
Having a safe and comfortable space to prepare food is an essential element to any backyard entertaining and living space. Grilling out with friends or cooking for your family, in the breeze, is quintessential California living. These spaces should be far enough away from the home as to not pose a risk while using the grill, with adequate ventilation. These spaces can also have shade so that the cook can be comfortable in the summer sun. Outdoor cooking spaces can allow the host, or cook in the family, to still be included in the fun in the sun.

5832 La Cuesta Drive, Santa Rosa, California

Enjoying Food
Having a comfortable place to “eat, drink, and be merry” is another essential place to have in your backyard living spaces. These spaces allow for your loved ones to gather and be together over food and conversations. Creating an inviting space through comfortable seating that is organized in a way to enhance togetherness will help for people to be naturally drawn to these places.

5832 La Cuesta Drive, Santa Rosa, California

Activities
The perfect outdoor living space has a little fun mixed in there too. A pool can provide the element of fun for any backyard experience. Whether it is for cannon balls or lounging, a pool can create the life in the outdoor lifestyle. If a pool is not your style, other activities can help to get people moving in your outdoor spaces. Small patches of grass can be used for a bocce ball r croquet courts. Just imagine your backyard lifestyle, there are people chatting, others eating or cooking, and a few throwing a football or lounging by the pool. Activity is as much a part of optimum outdoor living as any other element in life.

A View
A view can draw you outside and keep you outdoors. If you have a property with a view, your outdoor living is enhanced by giving you a sense of place, as you gaze out at the expanse. All of the things we love about the outdoors, its ability to restore us, to make us think about life, to breathe in the fresh air and to breathe out our stress can be seen in one snapshot. The view provides the backdrop to life, it gives the living a context in the world as a whole.

4059 Burnside Road, Sebastopol, California​

Easy Access to the Outdoors
One of the biggest impacts our home can have on your indoor-outdoor lifestyle is how easy it is for us to access that outdoor space. When our homes have easy access to the outdoors, we are more likely to use those spaces as extra living spaces. You can enhance the ease of access by having large windows, beckoning out outside. The egress can be enhanced through large doors (i.e. french doors) that can be left open to allow the breeze to percolate through the whole home, incorporating the outdoors, in, and vice versa.

Outdoor living spaces can enhance the life in your California lifestyle. There are many aspects that can increase the use of these places, on your property but make access easier, and the spaces more inviting, comfortable, safe, and entertaining.